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| (tool, IBM) | SuperZap - An IBM utility program used to quickly patch
operating system or application program executable code
in preference to editing the source code and recompiling.
The SuperZAP program was a quick hack written by one IBM
Engineer, possibly from IBM UK, in the late 1960s to directly
fix executable files. He needed to fix a bug but it would
have taken hours to rebuild the vast OS/360 executables.
The S/360 architecture has an instruction ZAP (Zero and Add
Packed) for packed decmial arithmetic, that sets the byte at
a given address to a given value. Superzap used this to write
data given as a string of hex digits to a given location in an
executable file in a matter of seconds.
Soon the IBM development labs were releasing all Programming
Temporary Fixes (PTFs) to OS/360 in this form. OS/360
included a version called IMASPZAP or AMASPZAP which persisted
through MVS, MVS/SP, MVS/XA, OS/390 and probably still
remains in z/OS, the distant descendent of OS/360.
[Private 2004-02-05 e-mail from Chris Gage, IBM employee and
SuperZap user, 1970-]. | |
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